Hoik

A hoik is a row of sloped blocks cut into a sawtooth pattern. Stand on one and the game will not let you stay there, because your sprite overlaps a tile it should not be inside, so it ejects you instantly. Put another slope where you land and it ejects you again. Chain enough teeth and you have a track that throws anything on it across the world faster than any vehicle in the game.

Slopes arrived in 1.2 and this came with them. Re-Logic called it a feature in 1.3 rather than a bug, so it will not be patched away.

It all comes from one collision routine. When your sprite ends up inside a sloped tile, the game picks a direction and moves you there in a single tick. Collision runs sixty times a second, which is where the speed comes from.

• A slope rising toward you pushes you straight up, unless something solid sits over your head.
• A slope angled down pushes you down, unless something solid sits under your feet.
• If the vertical route is blocked you go sideways, the way the slope faces, and solid blocks on that side are ignored.
• Foot height slopes try upward first. A block above your head cancels that, and so does holding the down key.

The sideways case is why long distance hoiking works: the track drags you through solid stone, so only the teeth matter and everything around them can be filled in.

Building the line is easy. Getting your sprite in front of the first tooth is the fiddly part, and most of the strange construction in other hoiks exists to solve it.

• Step up onto a plain block or a platform hammered to half height.
• Actuate the lead tooth away, stand in the gap, and switch it back on with an Actuator circuit.
• Put a sloped platform or an inactive sloped block against the vertical face of the first tooth, so collision stops seeing the flat surface beside it.
• Teleport in, grapple across, or feed one hoik into the entrance of the next.

A plain horizontal line moves one tile per tick, so 60 tiles a second. Space the teeth so each displacement covers two tiles and that doubles to 120. Vertical elevators jump three tiles a step, putting a shaft at 180 tiles a second either way.

Spacing has rules. Upward elevators tolerate a single tile gap, useful for lining up the floor you want, but only on alternate teeth: two thin gaps in a row and your head jams on the third tooth. Width decides the rest. Two tiles gives both directions if the teeth are actuated and switched, three lets an up line and a down line share the shaft, and four keeps them from interfering at all.

A Minecart tops out near 48 tiles a second and has to accelerate first, rope climbs at roughly 31 and drops at 38, and a Teleporter needs Skeletron dead plus wiring at both ends. A hoik costs a hammer and works on day one. What you give up is comfort. The track is a fixed corridor, stopping where you meant to takes engineered gaps, and every displacement counts as hitting a tile, so you arrive with no momentum at all.

Stack stair platforms vertically against a block and you get a horizontal one way wall. Anything passes through in one direction, projectiles and enemies included. You hold the down key to go through yourself, and an enemy only uses it while chasing something below.

Mounts pass cleanly, so a one way wall above a normal door is the cheapest mount friendly doorway in the game, skipping the Tall Gate and the wired actuator version entirely. It will not cooperate with Smart Doors. Bottom platforms, hammered three times, do the vertical version and carry you up through as much as three blocks of ceiling.

Loop a hoik onto itself and you have a timer faster than any craftable clock, built from the Wire and pressure plates found underground, which makes statue farming practical very early. Standing in one throws your character back and forth fast enough to read as a strobe.

• Dropped items obey the same rule, so a tooth line under a farm sweeps drops to one collection point. That is how automatic Fallen Star collectors work, and a short line across an arena pulls hearts and mana stars toward you.
• Item hoiks only run on screen. Anything outside the rendered area sits still, so a farm you walk away from stops collecting, and conveyor belts are the fix.
• Build the teeth from Echo Blocks and the track disappears. Nothing visible is moving you.
• Players, enemies, town NPCs, the Target Dummy and the Eternia Crystal all ride hoiks, mounted players included. A mount makes your hitbox taller, so the gaps have to widen to match.
• Arriving too fast can skip a tooth and break the chain.
• Block swapping platforms into upside down slopes makes broken platforms that behave like teeth, and lines built that way can be walked onto directly.
• In cricket a hoik is an ugly, graceless swipe at the ball. Outside the sport it means yanking something along without care.